And Over All the Creatures
by LucyToo
Summary: The vicious murder of a friend leads Raph, Mike, Leo and Don into combat with a group of religious fanatics who consider the turtles soulless abominations.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note - If you've read my other stories, namely Alienation and Silence, you might have realized that I'm fond of villains who have points to make. There's really no one scarier than someone who believes they're right._

_This story has a similar villain. A whole stack of villains, actually. Bishop believed he was right in the name of science. Prince thought he was right for the sake of knowledge and his cynical philosophies. The villains in this story believe they are right in the name of God._

_I'm writing that as a warning, because I know people can be sensitive about religion. Rest assured, I am in no way against any religion of any kind. These people are not meant to comment on any particular church or area of worship. They represent religion the way Bishop represented science - wrongly._

_Another warning - this story is dark. Dark dark. I was giving myself shivers just thinking it over when the idea hit me earlier. There will be bad things happening. Broken spirits, torment. Death (not one of the four boys, nor Splinter, but pretty harsh death all the same). There is a lot of ugly. Can't stress it enough._

_And, the last warning - this story is last of the sequels to The Part You Won't Recognize. It isn't related to the events in that story, but it does assume that they happened. That means the OC, Kate, is back. But then, she's actually not back at all (see death warning above). If you haven't read TPYWR, just assume Raph's gotten himself involved with Kate, a black working girl from East New York. Knowing more than that ain't necessary - she won't be around long enough for it to matter._

* * *

Oh, Mike was happy enough for Raph. Easy to be happy for the lighter moods, the relaxation and smiles that his angry brother was finally allowing for himself. 

But it was hard to deny the bite of envy when Kate came around and gave Raph that private look. It was hard to miss the little touches when they passed each other, the smiles exchanged. The nights Raph 'walked her home' and came back at dawn tired and glowing.

It was hard to ignore the little voice in his mind that whispered _why not me_?

Oh, he didn't like Kate like Raph did. She was a neat chick and all - she called him Doodlebug, and Mike liked having a nickname from a cool blaxploitation movie. She was good for Raph. Made him happy, which was a miracle in itself.

But Mike didn't _want_ Kate. He wanted those looks. He wanted that glow and somewhere to be at night and someone to touch him on the arm as absently as Kate touched Raph.

Hard not to be jealous, considering it broke the odds that even one of them had found a relationship.

The jealousy faded fast the day she stopped calling.

At first he was amused by Raph's dive into worry - was she okay? Was she dumping him in some uncharacteristically passive way? But the days passed and the phone stayed silent, and there was no Cleopatra Jones to Mike's Doodlebug, and Raph didn't smile anymore.

Raph went to her place at night, Mike knew. But she was never there. He talked to her friends - most folks on her block knew Raph, and he had people he could ask.

He kept calling one woman in particular - another pro Kate knew with the strange name of Shug. He seemed convinced Shug would know if Kate had simply left because she wanted something more normal.

Shug denied it. Raph never believed her.

"The trail's too cold to follow," Raph admitted to him late one night, almost two weeks after last seeing Kate. "If she's missing I wouldn't know how to start looking. At least if she left me I'd know she was alright."

If she left him, Mike thought to himself as he watched his strong brother fall into sleepless worry and frustrated searching, Mike would kill her himself.

Then Shug called.

Even Splinter took to the rooftops that night, unwilling to let Raph go alone.

* * *

Whoever had taken her put her back in her apartment. Shug found her, and out of respect for Raph and knowledge of what he was she'd called him to come first before she would call the cops.

Mike had seen death before. They fought a lot of battles, and fighting brought harsh realities. But those deaths were sudden, right there. A fallen Foot or street punk that simply didn't get up again.

Kate was something different.

Mike couldn't remember a lot of details from the past deaths he'd seen. But he was sure he wouldn't forget the copper smell of the apartment. The dark maroon of dried blood. Her face, blank and tilted and empty.

Strange things left around her. On the walls, lines painted. The letter T over and over. Or crosses, maybe. They had a stark look, dark black and dripping against the grey walls. On the floors were hunks of leaves tied together with twine, with burned ends.

She had been covered with a white robe, too large to be hers. It was easy to see what killed her once the robe was lifted off.

Evisceration. Another word Don used. But it wasn't quite right, because it didn't look like her organs had been removed. She had simply been cut open, hipbone to hipbone, and spread wide.

They'd seen death before. All of them. But Don wretched, and Leo turned away. Splinter bowed his head and spoke soft chanted words. Mike knew every aspect of it, every sight, every smell and sound, would stick with him. Haunt him afterwards.

And then there was Raph.

Mike was jealous of him for a while there. Finding a girl, winning her over. Being happy. In the end? He would never be jealous again. Not of a single moment Raph might've had with her.

Because there was no way it could have been worth the pain.


	2. Chapter 2

East New York apartments were small. Plain. They had walls shabby and grey with age, probably clogged with asbestos. Nothing in an East New York apartment was new. Furniture was all threadbare, probably hand-me-down from family or picked up abandoned on a sidewalk.

If people could've afforded better, they wouldn't be living in East New York.

But he liked the apartment. He always had. He liked the couch that sunk in a springy crater when he sat on it. He liked the water spots on the ceiling and the unnaturally yellow appliances that had to be forty years old. He liked the awkward lighting from white overhead fixtures that glared in a way that left shadows in strange areas.

He liked the pictures on the walls. Kate's family. Her boisterous African mother, whose voice Raph could still hear in his head though she'd been dead for years. Her father, with the long, overlarge nose Kate had inherited. The dark skin and black eyes and the smirk that said he didn't have a problem pulling one over on anyone who'd fall for it. Larger pictures full of broad-bodied, black-skinned people with the same shaped faces. The brothers who lived upstairs, and more relatives Raph didn't know.

In a lot of those pictures was Kate, when she was young and thin and rangy, with a mess of curls on her head that she had once told Raph she always cut herself, because her mother loved that she had her father's hair. Fewer from recent years, when she'd grown into herself and was…

Raph thought she was beautiful. She was nothing like what Mike's TV called beautiful, but damn. All smooth brown skin and black hair and dark eyes. A curving, lush body - she'd smacked him once for calling her skinny.

That nose. Hell, for some reason it was the nose, big and broad and Arabic, that stuck with him the most. The kids in the hood, the girls, called her names when she wasgrowing up, she said. Teased her for her nose.

He loved it.

Her hands. She had nice hands. Hell, she had hands that could work frigging magic.Those hands had touched him like he was a wonder. Spent long minutes trailing over the grooves in his carapace, over the bridge and across the plastron. She loved touching his arms, his legs. Everything. She hadn't been scared off by any part of him.

Five tiny little thin fingers. Holding them felt like delicate work - they looked fragile, small against his broad palm, his three thick green fingers.

He liked the apartment. He liked her. He liked the thin hand laying on his palm.

"Raph?"

He could almost pretend she was all right. Asleep, maybe, after one of their more interestingly-spent evenings. Her hands were limp then, too.

"Raph?"

But when she was asleep she was still warm. Not like now.

"Hey."

Movement in front of him was jarring - he wasn't prone to reflective states, but he was kind of stuck in one, and he didn't want to get kicked out of it yet.

But there was Leo, and when Raph breathed in he could smell the tang of the blood, and when he looked down her hand was still limp. Her skin was still cool.

Leo met his eyes. "We've been here for a while, Raph. They have to call the cops soon."

He looked down again. Cops. What good were the fucking cops? If the cops in New York were worth a shit he and his brothers would have nothing to do. Kate would be alive.

He'd known she was dead. He had. As much as he denied it, and searched, and refused to acknowledge it to Mikey, he'd known.

She wouldn't have run off without a word. Never. He wanted to think she was alive, but he never believed she'd just left. She was honest to a fault. Blunt, especially when it was an ugly truth. It was one of the things he first liked about her.

He'd known for days, maybe weeks, that she was dead. If she hadn't run, and she hadn't, then she'd been taken. Nobody who snatched women kept them for that long just to return them alive.

Maybe it was good he'd been sure. It made this easier. It kept him from erupting in front of his brothers, Splinter. Shug, standing in the doorway keeping people out, letting Raph have his time with Kate without interruption.

It kept him sitting there, dumb, on the floor, holding a cold hand. Leo said they'd been there for a while, but he might've just sat down. Or he might've been there months.

He kind of wanted to get up, to walk the small apartment. See the pictures again. The bedroom…

…she had slept beside him at night before he left, and sometimes her hand would trail up and down his arm until she dozed off, and she was usually smiling. Smiling, like she was just happy, and he had made her that way.

Once he'd mentioned to her how his brothers used to gossip about women and sex and what it all might be like. It was a lot like their talks about what it would be like if they were human and could go anywhere and be anything. It was a dream, an illusion. Something they'd never have, because they couldn't change what they were.

The frigging miracle of a lifetime, that Raph had felt his first real attraction for the one woman in the world who would look past the green and the shell and only judge for what she saw beyond.

She'd laughed and called him deep and reminded him of Shug's open admiration of his muscles. Said she was using him for his body, not in spite of it.

Happy and laughing and she made him laugh too because it was a joke, and she really did see more, and out of all his brothers it was _him_ who…

"Raph?" Mike took Leo's place, crouching in front of him. His eyes were wet, the orange under them a bit darker than the rest of his band. "We've got to go."

Raph spoke for the first time since entering the apartment. "So go."

They expected him to erupt, he figured. To throw things and scream and rage and threaten. He hadn't. He'd seen the blood, seen the robe. When Don had lifted the robe he'd seen what was under it. Her. Naked and torn in half, splayed like she'd been dropped there. Eyes open.

Facing death down, he thought suddenly. Eyes wide open, facing it like the stubborn bitch she insisted she was.

A hand touched his arm, the one that held Kate's, and his free hand shot out and struck it away reflexively. His gaze lifted.

Mike held up his hands. "Sorry. Look, Raph, I know…"

Raph shook his head. Mike didn't know. She'd called him Doodlebug the last few weeks she was around, because of some dumb movie he'd watched. He'd loved it, beaming at the name every time she said it. So Mike had that to remember. He was Doodlebug, but he still didn't know.

Raph didn't know if he loved Kate. He'd asked Leo once how he was supposed to know something like that. Which version of what human fantasy description of fireworks and sparks would apply to a cynical jackass like him?

He didn't know, which maybe meant he didn't love her. But maybe he could have. He was on his way to finding out. He was happy.

She was happy.

They deserved to be able to find out. Damn it.

Another touch on his hand, and he grabbed, caught a wrist and bent it back. When he looked at who it was attached to, it was Splinter's fur-rimmed black eyes he saw.

He released Splinter's hand, but he didn't apologize.

Splinter simply drew his hand back. "Come, Raphael. There is nothing more to do here, and grief will find you back in our own home."

Grief. Was that what he felt?

He didn't think so. He felt like someone had opened his head and scooped out everything but a few scattered thoughts and some dark undercurrents of feeling. Like there were just random memories rattling around in his mind.

He should have felt grief. He should have been screaming. He was the hot head, right? The rash, over-emotional, kick-first-questions-later nutcase of the four of them. He was all explosion and fury and…

"Raphael. My son. I understand this pain, but you must not forget who we are. We have been here among humans for too long already. We must go."

When he breathed in he could almost taste particles of blood in the air. Before that day he could taste dust and stale air. East New York apartments.

Maybe if he screamed they'd leave him be. They never knew how to handle him in his angriest moods.

He looked up. "Father," he said, his voice strange. "I'd like time. These humans know me. I'll be alright."

Splinter's face shifted. Sometimes it was hard to read his expressions, but the softening of his eyes was obvious. "Time will change nothing."

"Please."

Splinter regarded him, and looked up towards the door, where Shug's brightly-dressed bulk blocked them from interfering eyes. "Leonardo will remain with you."

A rumble in his gut - thunder that warned of possible lightning. Leo because Leo would make sure he left soon. Leo wouldn't be talked into staying until the sun was threatening.

But he nodded.

Splinter clasped his arm. "Come to see me when you return home."

Meditation, solemn words. Candles and silence and Raph nodded, though he knew it wouldn't help.

Splinter motioned behind them, and Raph's eyes left him, and his thoughts left his brothers. Maybe they left, maybe they didn't.

He didn't think it was denial keeping him so hushed. She was right there. She was cold in his hand and her eyes stared - Don said something about time of death when he couldn't shut her eyes. Bodies that stiffened in rigor mortis eventually relaxed, and since she hadn't yet she hadn't been dead long.

What was he…oh. Denial. She was there, her blood was all around. Her wounds were covered by that robe, but he couldn't forget them. So he wasn't in denial.

Shock, maybe? He did feel cold - was that physical shock or mental?

Hell, Donnie would know. Maybe he'd ask him one day.

Strange how different their hands were, considering that she held his hand a lot. Her thumb brushed his, her fingers locked two by two between his. If it felt awkward for her she never said so. She seemed to like it.

He looked up suddenly. "Leo."

Leo was sitting on that lumpy couch. His eyes were already on Raph.

Raph cleared his throat. "Wait outside."

Leo frowned.

"These people know me.You'll be safe. And you shouldn't be in here."

Leo's head tilted in question.

Raph swallowed. "You called her a whore once."

Leo blinked.

And yeah. She _was_ a whore. That was one of those things she was brutally honest about. But she said it, and Raph saw it, as an unfortunate but legitimate job in the place she lived.

Leo had spoken it like an insult. Disgusting. Like he was calling her a rapist, or a killer. Criminal, he'd said.

He shouldn't be there.

Leo was thick about things like that, but somehow he understood. He stood. "I'll wait out in the hall."

Unusually docile, Raph thought as Leo went. Maybe grief was good for something.

Even with Leo gone he could feel a clock ticking. Splinter's urgency wasn't without cause, of course. She did deserve doctors and police and rest.

He hadn't intended to leave her side but he found himself looking at those pictures on the wall, opening the fridge randomly, seeing her usual stock of soda and beer, a plastic container full of food that had probably gone bad. Leftovers from some family meal or one of the hood's barbeques.

Back in the bedroom she had a few pictures. Her mother and father together. Mismatched, those two. The large, midnight-black Nigerian woman, the lanky conman from Lebanon. There was one of her and her parents, from years ago.

And a newspaper clipping.

Old article. A photograph, grainy and blurred, of a dark, broad figure on a motorcycle. Headline wondering if this was the first picture of a mysterious figure reporters were calling the Nightwatcher.

So, a photo of him, beside her family.

Not fair.

He took that clipping when he walked out of the room. She wouldn't've minded, and he could look at it now and then and remember that he'd meant something to someone.

He took a picture off her wall. One of the more recent shots, her alone but with people milling in the background. She was laughing.

Beautiful.

He could look at that now and then, too.

When he came by to see her at night, he came and left by the window. She got a kick out of seeing him scaling buildings like the laws of gravity didn't apply to him, and it was easier than chancing a meeting with neighbors who'd ask him about why the Nightwatcher wasn't making any more appearances.

He left by the window this time, too. He didn't say goodbye to her - the picture in his hands was more the Kate he knew than that body on the floor was. But he said goodbye to the apartment, and it was almost the same thing.

Hell, maybe he'd been in love with the idea of it all. Maybe it could have been any girl, any apartment.

He cradled the picture in its frame as he went his quick, quiet way up the fire escape to the roof. He knew the route so well that he hardly had to look up when he jumped over the ledge onto the flat surface of the roof.

Which was probably what did him in, really.

The truly successful ambushes weren't stand-offs or fights. They were one strike, and then they were done.

He didn't see who, or how. He felt a moment of splitting pain in his skull, and he heard the sound of a plastic picture frame clattering on the roof.

And as he fell all he could think of was that he'd forgotten Leo, standing in the hall outside Kate's apartment waiting patiently for him.


	3. Chapter 3

One night when he was out running the roofs with Casey, they'd gotten bored with pickpockets and teenagers tagging buildings, and they'd gone back to Casey's place.

Raph had tasted alcohol before, but that night he just about drowned in it.Two pals, pretending to be normal, taking shots from every bottle Casey had around. Daring each other to do more, laughing and idiotic and waiting for oblivion.

Raph had woken up the next morning and wanted to die.

That feeling, the pounding in his head, the nausea rolling his gut, the dry mouth and thick tongue, was exactly what he was reminded of when he opened his eyes into darkness, wondering what the hell he'd done to himself.

His head was throbbing, his body oddly heavy. His arms were cramped, and…

No. Not cramped.

He squinted through the darkness, but couldn't see a damned thing. He could feel, though. And he felt bindings. Something thin, something tight around his wrists and winding up his hands. His palms were pressed together, tied to stay that way.

Hell. What was going on? Last thing he remembered was…

Memory seemed to pour like tar, making everything slow and heavy and thick.

Kate.

Kate was dead. Kate was cut open and on the floor in her apartment, left like trash.

He'd been there with his family. The last thing he remembered was holding her hand, sitting there in a daze. And now he was in the dark with his hands tied together, and his head pounding like he'd downed a bottle of tequila.

Maybe he'd snapped. Maybe he'd exploded and gone nuts, and they had shut him up somewhere to keep him…

No.

Fuck, his head hurt. Maybe he really had gotten wasted again. But where was he? And why were his hands--

Light. Suddenly, a small block, and his eyes were drawn instantly. Light filtered through an opening, but he had to squint against it and nothing really got any clearer.

"You're awake. Good."

He frowned. That was definitely not one of his brothers or Casey. He swallowed against a dry throat, wanting to ask.

But suddenly lights flickered over his head, erupting bright and harsh. His eyes shut instantly, and his aching head cried out in protest. He bowed his head, grimacing.

"Sorry. Take a few moments to adjust. How are you feeling?"

The voice was polite. Male, unaccented. Pleasant, which was always alarming.

Raph swallowed again, eyes clamped safely shut. "Who're you?"

"I think long explanations can wait until you're feeling better. You may call me Stephen."

"Where am I?"

A low chuckle. "Don't worry about that. It's unimportant. You're with us now, and that's all you are."

Raph snorted, though the impact might've been lost with his bowed head and bound hands. Probably looked like he was praying to the guy or something. "Where am I?"

The guy, Stephen, didn't miss a beat. "You'll be with us until we let you go. In the meantime, devote yourself to healing."

"Healing?" He blinked squinting eyes upwards. His vision was adjusting, though his head suffered for it.

"Yes, Raphael. Healing."

Raph tensed, and his eyes opened too fast. Hurting, too bright, but he looked towards the voice for the few seconds he could stand it.

"Of course I know your name. I know a lot of things about you, Raphael. You and your companions."

Raph pushed up off the wall he was slouched against. No more time for rest. Time to get the hell out of there, and fast.

It was nothing but a room. Four walls. That first burst of light, and Stephen's voice, came from a plain door in front of him. No knob or handle, so obviously this was meant to be a prison.

Stephen spoke from the other side of a small, square window in the door. "Relax. Your head must be aching, and we've got all the time in the world to talk."

Raph ignored him, looking around the room. It was bright - off-white, he thought, but it was hard to tell. Walls, ceiling, floor, it was all one color. Not clean - there were stains over it, dots and streaks of brown, with a big stain on the floor near him. The wall by the doorway seemed stained heavily, too. Marked with blotchy dark patterns.

No windows, no way out but that door.

He looked back at it, the light too bright to fully study it. The opening was small - he doubted one hand would fit through, and his were bound together. They drew his focus, and he frowned at the way he was tied. It was a thin, long strip of plastic or something. Almost like those zip cords cops used a lot of time instead of handcuffs to bind prisoners, but longer, and he couldn't spot right away where the ends of it were. The plastic wrapped around his wrists, crossed its way back and forth up his hands.

Shit. When Raph got himself grabbed he didn't do it halfway.

He squinted at the door. "What is this?"

He could hear the smile in Stephen's voice when he answered. "We're giving you a chance, Raphael. We're allowing you to heal. To repent."

Raph blinked. "What?"

"You have sinned. Against God, against nature. You must be punished as your partner was. But we're giving you a chance - more chance than you deserve. With _this_ punishment can come healing. Repentance. Contrition. It doesn't have to end the way it did for her."

Her?

His partner?

He looked up at the door, his eyes wide open despite the harshness of the lights. The guy was talking about Kate. He had to be. This guy…

This guy killed her.

These people, this place. She'd been taken, brought here maybe, and put through some kind of…what? Healing? Repentance? Whatever the hell that meant.

His memory was still fuzzy, but he did remember not feeling the fury his brothers expected when he saw Kate dead.

That fury, though, it wasn't absent. Just buried under other things. Like a hand thrusting out of the dirt in a bad horror movie, it was starting to emerge.

He grinned, and it felt sharp and edged, like it could cut through his cheeks if he let it. "You're dead."

"Excuse me?"

He looked at the opening in the door. No face was clear on the other side, but he looked as evenly as if he saw the man down to the last detail. "You made a huge mistake here, pal. I'm getting out of here, and now I'll make sure you're dead before I do."

A small sigh filtered in. "Defiance is not in your best interests, Raphael. You will be humble. You will be grateful for the chance we're giving you. Before this door ever opens you will thank us for bringing you here."

"You're nuts, pal. I'm out of here. My brothers are probably outside your door already."

"No." Stephen sounded like he was smiling again. "No, your brothers aren't even looking for you."

"Bullshit."

"Kindly don't use language like that in this place."

"Fuck you."

"Very well." The sound of movement from the other side of the door, and lower voices.

Were there other people out there? That was just fucking brilliant.

Stephen spoke again after a moment. "The lights over your head? Those will remain on night and day. You will not sleep, you will not eat, you will not drink, until you begin to appreciate the value of this gift you're being given. Do you see the wall to your right?"

He frowned, but squinted at the dark blotch on the wall.

Not a blotch. Words, written thick and black and running together.

_On my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee…_

He didn't bother reading the rest.

"Those are the key to opening this door, to beginning your journey. When you speak those words and mean them, only then will I show you pity."

"I'll die first," Raph answered, sending another sharp-edged grin to the door.

"That might be. And it might be proper. After all, you're sitting in the blood of your lady friend."

His eyes went down, to the wide stain of brown on the floor by his leg. Not sitting on it, but sitting close enough, and there were other spatters and stains and streaks, and...

Blood. Old blood.

His hands would have been fists if they weren't tied together. He pressed his palms together, biting back rising rage. "You're a dead man."

"And you are a beast without soul. An abomination to this world. You should appreciate that we love life enough to try to save yours. You should thank the God you offend by walking His earth. In the meantime, you will listen to some words I doubt you've ever read before. Joan?"

A female voice, pinched and breathless, began speaking.

"'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters.'"

He was almost amused in some dark way, but as the woman's voice trailed on his muddy thoughts went back to Kate. Her blank, lifeless, open eyes. Was this room the last thing she had seen? Were words like these the last ones she'd heard?

How long had she been trapped there? And what had happened to make them kill her?

He sat back against the walls, hands awkwardly pointing, unable to relax. Another dark thought hit him, and he shut his eyes to block the painfully bright white lighting overhead.

Stephen spoke suddenly, over the woman. "I will return to begin your counselling, Raphael."

"Fuck you, pal." His head was pounding, his thoughts too muddled to react any stronger. He had to do more. To say more. To jump up and strike out against this nut and his Bible-reading girlfriend. He just couldn't get his body to move, or his mind to focus. Not enough.

"You will thank Him in the end. You will thank me. God has broken stronger wills than yours."

* * *

It was painful to have to make the trip back by himself, tracing the route from roof to roof back to their own part of the city, and down into their sewers.

Painful to have to look at Mikey's sad eyes and Don's concerned frown.

Worse to have to lead them back to Splinter's door, so he could tell them all together.

"Raph ran off."

"What?" It was Mikey who answered first.

Leo kept his eyes on Splinter. "He asked me to give him some time alone. I was right outside the door. After a while I looked in to check on him and he was gone."

Splinter's eyes glittered.

"He must have taken off out the window, but I didn't see any sign."

Mike made a soft, distressed sound in his throat.

Splinter let out a slow breath. "I should have predicted it. He was far too calm."

Leo frowned. Calm wasn't even the word for what Raph was. His last words to Leo were…flat. Asking him to leave, bringing up hard words between them, but almost polite about it. Requesting Leo listen, rather than yelling or ordering.

He wondered if he hadn't agreed to leave so easily because he simply didn't know how to deal with Raph when he acted that way.

Raph had never been the type to need comfort before now. He never asked for it, and when he got it he brushed it off. Now? Now maybe he needed it, and Leo had turned his back.

"You mean he's out there on his own hunting down Kate's killers?"

Leo glanced at Mike. He nodded. "I shouldn't have left him alone. I can't even pretend to guess where he would go."

"Raphael is headstrong and emotional." Splinter spoke slowly. "But he isn't foolish. He might choose to begin this fight alone, but I doubt he will stay away when the search proves difficult. He will be back."

It was Don, surprisingly, who spoke up in argument. "We're not just going to sit around here and wait for him."

Leo frowned. "Doyou have any idea how to find him?"

"April and Casey? He'll have to contact someone. He can't just go jumping around rooftops until he overhears a confession."

Leo turned to Splinter. "Father?"

Splinter nodded. "Contact Miss O'Neil and Mr. Jones. Perhaps April will be able to tell us if Kate's murder is part of another, larger trend. I seem to recall her neighborhood having its share of murders recently."

Leo grimaced. "Don?"

"Yeah." He was already heading for the phone.

"What do we do?" Mike asked, voice small.

Leo let out a small, contained sigh. "I already spoke to that woman, Shug. She'll call if anyone there sees him."

"We have to try, though."

Leo touched Mike's arm, light but supportive. After Raph, Mike would take Kate's death the hardest. Leo knew they had some kind of friendship. Mike really didn't need the stress of knowing Raph was out on his own, hunting down killers.

He frowned to himself, trying not to let anger push into his thoughts. Not Raph's fault. Raph was upset, and he was justified. And Leo had left him.

Their father gazed out into the distance for a thoughtful moment. "I doubt Raphael will be found before he wants to be. Nevertheless, we will not abandon him to his search. You will look."

"This city is huge, and we don't know--"

"Leo! We'll look anyway!" Mike's expression was dark as he pulled away from Leo's hand. He shook his head, moving away to join Don by the phone.

Leo looked after him, almost hurt. Of course they would look anyway. But they had to have some kind of plan. Some starting point. Leo wouldn't abandon one of his brothers. Not even when they all but asked to be left alone.

Splinter cleared his throat softly. "Leonardo."

Leo turned instantly. "Yes, sensei?"

"Perhaps you are angry at Raphael leaving you without a word, but don't let your anger block you from seeing the bigger issues."

Bigger issues.

Leo drew a breath and nodded. Raph out there alone, hunting for the person who murdered his… girlfriend, or whatever Kate was to him. That was the bigger issue, and no, he shouldn't have even considered not going to look, as fruitless as a blind search in New York City was.

He didn't think it was anger blocking his mind, though. He wasn't angry, and if it bubbled up it was directed at himself. He should have known Raph's quiet shock wouldn't last.

And Leo understood the desire for revenge, even if he would have gone about it differently.

What was blocking him, he thought, was the sense that something felt off, and he couldn't figure out what it was.


	4. Chapter 4

He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there listening to that woman's voice. She would get hoarse, she would pause for a couple of minutes.She would start again. Hour after hour, never rushed, always content to drone out begets and thines.

Not that he was listening. After a while it had become white noise in his ears. He sat there and felt the throbbing in his head go down, slow and steady. As the pain went down, his mind grew clearer, and he was able to think about where he was.

Maybe one day he'd look back and find it funny. He'd battled ninja, aliens, robots, monsters, and there he was caught by a bunch of culty religious types who apparently wanted his blood because he _sinned_.

But it wasn't really funny at all. There was Kate, hanging over the room like a ghost. Hanging over him.

These creeps should have at least taken them together, if they held them both guilty of some crime. At least he could've been there with her, knowing what was happening. Taking the heat off her onto himself. Saving her, somehow.

She'd never really needed him to rescue her. Not before now. Hell, that had to be one of the reasons he liked her so much. She may not have been some warrior princess, or Karai - she was a normal person in a tough neighborhood who could and would take on everything from a serial killer to a giant, judgmental mutant turtle to keep the people she cared about safe.

They'd cry for her in the hood. Her uncles would be furious - they'd buried her mother just a few years back. The working girls would take it hard - she was one of them. Their champion when no one else was looking out for them. And them dying was supposed to be over with. Done, once the asshole killing them was thrown in jail.

Hell, and her dad was still in prison. She said he'd relied on her visits. A criminal, yeah, and a bad one, but he felt a little sorry for Andrew Fadillah, knowing he'd never have that warm smile across the glass from him again. It'd make prison that much worse, no doubt.

There were a lot of people out there who'd be worse off without Kate around. That was something Stephen and his group - however many there were - didn't seem to think about.

Sin, God. Bibles and repentance. Raph didn't know about any of that crap. He didn't honestly care. Splinter raised them to believe in the value of an innocent life, and that was obviously something these fuckers didn't get.

Maybe he was a soulless beast, maybe not. He didn't see that he was that different from anyone else walking around. He had a family he loved, he had a girl he cared about and would've fought like hell for if he'd gotten there in time. He risked his ass time and again for people who would never see his face.

He wasn't evil. Kate told him that, and Kate went to church.

Seemd like the whole frigging hood went to church. He'd always thought that was kind of funny. These people weren't pure or innocent. The thugs on the stoops, the girls working the corners, the old men and women and the foul-mouthed kids, they'd every week get dressed up in their best and go sit together and talk about God in whichever kind of church they ended up at.

Kate told him all about it, during one of their endless talks about their different lives. She said God was most important to people in the hood - to people anywhere who were broke, hurting, suffering with no end in sight. They had to be able to hold on to the idea that someday, in some other place, their suffering would be worth it.

"People have to have hope, Raph. Some of 'em got no hopes in life that they can see, so they put all their faith in an afterlife where their suffering will be rewarded. Yeah, they sin, but you won't find a place where people believe more strongly in the power of Jesus and faith."

Raph didn't know about religion. He didn't think he'd be inclined to believe in it. But did know about faith and hope, and he understood where Kate and her neighborhood came from.

These people? Stephen and this woman reading the Bible to him from behind a closed door? He didn't get that.

Leaving a girl…a _good_ girl, damn it, smart and beautiful and a decent, kind girl…dead on the floor of her apartment, cut open, left to rot. That wasn't about faith or hope. That couldn't be about any God Kate understood.

Things were gonna suck when he got out of there. He had gotten so used to having a place to run off to where his brothers wouldn't follow. A friend, a smiling face. A warm voice, and that obnoxiously soft curly hair. He would miss talking to her. He'd miss popping in, knocking on the window. Watching her face light up each and every time he showed.

He'd miss staying over. He'd miss those moment where talking and grins led to longer moments of eye contact, and volume dropping, and words laced with innuendo making them laugh until she'd reach for him, or he'd reach for her, and it wasn't funny anymore. It was breathless and soft, skin against skin, finding new places on each other that caused shivers and groans.

He'd been awkward every time they did something different, but she had looked at him with wonder and heat in her eyes, and nothing more. The disgust never came. Curiosity, yeah, there was a lot of that, from both of them. But never disgust. She had never looked at him like some creature she couldn't understand.

First time he'd felt her hand sliding between his legs and up into his shell to touch him, he'd been awed by it. She didn't care, that was the wonder. Right shape, she'd said with a heated smile, and the size would make Shug jealous all over again.

She'd told him once that people like her, from the hood, with doubtful futures, didn't care much about a perfect ideal happiness. They learned fast to figure out what made them happy and go at it as often as they could.

He had made her happy, so she didn't bother looking at him like an animal. He was her happiness, and she could've cared less what form it took, she just enjoyed the hell out of it while she could.

He _understood_ that. What chances did he and his brothers have for happiness? They could laugh with each other, enjoy the adrenaline-fueled rush of a fight. Pal around with the two humans who called them friends. That was it. There wasn't anything more to look forward to. The things that kept them from finding more in life were never going to change. They'd always be walking, talking freaks in a world full of people who craved normality.

So he absolutely understood seeing something that might make things better and grabbing it hard and fast, without thinking about whether it would be considered proper or right by anyone else.

Maybe Kate herself hadn't been the biggest draw. Maybe it was the happiness. Things had fallen the way they had, and if she'd been anyone else maybe he would have been just as happy.

But as he sat there he thought about her a lot, and his mind played back weird things. The nose she hated so much, the clothes she wore when she was working - tight, short, and like a lot of the girls she looked dazzling from far away. But up close the threads showed.

She liked old music. Old R&B, and she actually had a record player in her apartment left by her mom. She'd play old albums - Aretha Franklin and Billie Holiday, and though they were always background Raph thought he knew most of the songs by heart. Those women sounded the way Kate felt. Smokey and low, living through pain and not faltering.

He could sit on her couch for hours and watch her tidy up the place, shaking her ass to the music, talking aimlessly about some part of the life there that he was curious about. Or sometimes her dad's family in Lebanon would call and she would answer them in Arabic, and he'd listen in interest. She admitted once to him that she was lost after the small talk was done, but didn't want to admit to family how half-assed her Arabic was. But he loved to hear it. Flowing and strange and harsh in ways, but exotic.

Maybe he would've been happy with any girl, but he doubted somehow that he'd ever have gotten close enough to another girl to find out. Things had gone right for them. Right in a lot of bad ways, maybe - people died, and he had come close to estranging his whole family - but even bumpy roads could lead to good places.

No. She was special. She was his, and that meant everything.

These people didn't know her. They knew things they shouldn't have known - his name, for instance, and he had to figure out how that happened. But they didn't know her. They didn't know him. They didn't know any damned thing.

It was cold in his little cell,and the blinding lights never let up for a moment. His throat was dry, his stomach had growled, but he couldn't do much about those two things.

When he got tired he slouched on the floor, tried to curl his arms over his face to sleep. But the voice reading the Bible stopped, and suddenly music, deafening and high choral voices singing about heaven, had blasted in through the window.

No sleep, Stephen had said. Raph sat up fast, and it was shut off. The voice began its reading again, and there he was.

It was a lousy kind of eulogy for Kate's life. Somewhere she was probably lying in a morgue, and word had spread around the hood. Her uncles would arrange to bury her. There would be a service. Maybe people would ask about him.

Soon as he got this mess he was in sorted out, he'd go by. He'd see the grave and maybe go by the apartment. Say hi to Shug.

Then he'd get back home and begin living without having her around.

* * *

Mike turned on the TV and backed up a few steps, blinking at it.

Picture appeared, and voices spoke. Some cooking show. Pasta.

He turned it off and sat heavily on the couch. No, no TV. Wasn't right, was it? Kate was dead and Raph was out there and he was going to sit and watch television?

It was just that there wasn't much else to do. It was daylight, and as if to spite them and their desire to search the sun was out and the sky was blue, and there weren't even clouds to hide under.

They were stuck, unable to go look. Wherever Raph was he had to be stuck too. And man, what was he even thinking? He had to know his bros would help him find these…these whoever who killed her like that. He had to know at least Mike would help. He was Doodlebug, damn it.

Raph might be in trouble. Might be stuck somewhere, or caught, or hurt. Or lost. Anything. Anywhere.

Leo'd been right the night before, Mike had realized. The city was too damned big, and since they had no idea where to start they had no idea where to look. Things like grid patterns and search techniques lost their value when it was a whole huge city with boroughs and islands, and they were chasing a ninja who didn't want to be found, and who had always been able to close his mind off from them when he wanted to.

He just wished...he wished Raph had waited. Had asked them. No, maybe since he was wishing for impossible things he should just wish none of this had ever happened.

He'd been jealous, a little. He'd almost come to resent her coming by, and Raph going to visit her. Them spending so much time together, obviously happy. But jeez, they could spend day and night attached at the hip, lip-locked or groping or being completely obnoxious together if it meant she could come back and Raph would be safe.

Mike glanced towards the dojo, where Leo was, and Don's room, where Don sat locked at the computer doing endless searches.

His eyes went to Splinter's room, and something made him stand up.

Their father would understand his discontent. Mikey wasn't usually the type to go in search of flowery speeches and meditation, but he thought it might help. And Splinter wouldn't question him. He'd just speak.

But halfway to the door the phone rang.

He sighed and changed course, heading for the pay phone. With any luck it was Casey. With any luck Raph had gone to him for help.

The door to the dojo opened just as he picked up the phone, and Leo looked out, still and solemn.

"Hello?"

"We don't wish to make enemies of you."

He blinked, frowning at the phone. "What? Who is this?" They didn't get a lot of wrong number calls down there, but he figured it was one of the rare ones.

The voice was male, the tone polite. Almost formal. "What we've done we had to do. We don't wish to make enemies of you turtles, but neither could we stand by and let those acts continue."

Mike's throat went dry. He gestured at Leo, gripping the phone hard. "How'd you get this number?"

"That's unimportant. I'm calling so you'll understand, we have nothing against the three of you that remain. We hope your good works will continue. But judgment must be rendered."

Leo stood at his side when he looked up, and Mike met his eyes. When he answered the guy on the phone, he spoke just as much to Leo. "The three of us that remain?"

Leo's face shifted, went hard.

The man on the phone hesitated before answering. "We don't want to kill him, you know. We didn't want to kill her. But we don't serve our own wills. We serve the Will of God. We serve a Higher Power, and when a beast so openly, so wantonly shatters the Lord's commands, we have to act."

Mike held the phone out, wide-eyed, letting Leo listen.

Leo snatched the phone. His mouth was already open, ready to let the man have it, but he hesitated. His mouth closed. His jaw set. He gestured at Don's door.

Mike went, fast, knocking and moving in without waiting for an answer. "Don, someone's got Raph."

Don was out right behind him, and they clustered around the phone.

Leo ignored them, listening hard. His hand was wrapped around the phone so tightly his knuckles were pale. When he spoke it was through gritted teeth. "You're saying you don't want anything from us? Why call here? How did you find our num--"

Mike leaned in, trying to hear.

Leo brushed him away. "What the hell does that mean?" He looked up at Don. "Leviticus?"

Don's eyes narrowed in instant thought. He turned and moved back to his room.

Mike stood, undecided, looking after Don and at Leo. He stayed where he was, mostly because he knew whatever Don was thinking he would tell them, and Leo could get closed-mouthed.

"Alright, you've said your piece. Now let me say mine. You're bringing God into this? I'm telling you that I will swear on God and the Bible that if you hurt my brother, if you kill him, we will find you and we will send you to see whether or not God appreciates what you're doing."

Leo squared his shoulders and held the phone out.

Mike grabbed it, but it was a dial tone when it reached his ear. He frowned and hung it up and faced Leo. "Well?"

Leo's eyes were strange. Wild. "They took him. He didn't run off, they took him from her apartment."

Mike grimaced, but in an odd way part of him was relieved. Raph hadn't tried to do it alone. He hadn't run off.

Which only left the question - "Who are they?"

"Hell if I know. The guy kept saying 'we', so I assume he's part of something bigger. Or maybe he meant him and God. He sounded like a nutcase."

Don appeared in his doorway and moved out to them, a thick book in his hand.

Leo glanced his way. "They say they've got him and they're keeping him, and whether he gets out or not is up to him."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. He was rambling. Leviticus and some numbers and God. Damn it!" His hands were fists. He looked like he wanted to hit something. Hard.

"What were the numbers?" Don asked, the book open.

Mike leaned in and squinted. The Bible. He supposed he wasn't too surprised that Donnie had a Bible. Probably had the Koran and the Bhagavad-Gita too lost on his overcrowded shelves.

Leo frowned, thinking. "Twenty, and…sixteen."

Don leafed quickly through the book, and slowed his search on one page. He scanned it, and he looked up.

"What?" Mike asked fast.

Don swallowed. Something in his eyes matched that fury in Leo's face. His shoulders went back, his usual unshakeable calmness looking ruffled.

Mike nearly grabbed the book from him. "Donnie? What's going on?"

Don's eyes dropped back to the page. "Leviticus is a book in the Bible. Twenty sixteen is chapter and verse."

"Read it," Leo said, his voice cold.

"'If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.'" He shut the book. His eyes rose again.

Silence fell.

Mike's eyes stayed on the shut book for a moment, then looked up at Don, and over at Leo. "They're gonna kill Raph?"

"Apparently they're giving him a chance to atone for his sins first." Leo swallowed suddenly and turned away. "But right now I don't care if he fakes them out and shows up here tomorrow safe and smiling, without a scratch on him.We're going to find these guys."


End file.
